Aggressive Inline Review

It's impossible to talk about an extreme sports game without referencing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. So let's get this out of the way now. Aggressive Inline wouldn't exist (and neither would most extreme sports games) if Hawk hadn't been so good and so popular. That said, Z-Axis' inline skating game expands on the tried and true Hawk formula, adding some new wrinkles that will make the game seem fresh to even the most die-hard Hawk fans.

Features

Twelve pro inline skaters, including Chris Edwards

Seven wacky unlockable skaters

Eight massive and unique levels

Vault over objects and swing on poles

Stats increase as you use specific skills

Xbox exclusive level

Customizable soundtrack

Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound

Gameplay Anyone who's played an extreme sports game will find Aggressive Inline an easy fit. There's nothing so new here that it will put anyone off and it maintains the three basics of the genre:

New levels are unlocked by completing goals

Stringing tricks together gives you more points, which is a good thing

It has a kickin' soundtrack.

However, Aggressive makes a few changes to the norm. The biggest is the lack of a clock. In career mode you can skate to your heart's content, provided that you keep some juice in your juice meter by performing tricks. As long as you keep active, you shouldn't have to worry about running out of juice. Should you run out of that precious commodity, you'll have to choose between losing your progress since your last save or spending 100,000 points to continue.

Z-Axis didn't necessarily get rid of the standard time element to be new and different. Considering the size of the levels in Aggressive, there's no way a two-minute clock would suffice. And when I say the levels are big, I do mean it. Each level includes locked areas, which can be opened by finding keys in other levels. Without the locked areas, the levels would already be massive, but toss in those unlockable goodies and you have some truly huge areas to explore.

Though there are only seven levels in the career mode (and an additional level, usable in other modes), none of them can be completed quickly. All the levels take time and skill. And since you don't have instant access to the locked areas immediately, you'll have to come back to each level to finish off the locked tasks. Some goals will be opened at the start of a level, others must be found by talking to various people in the level a la Dave Mirra.

Because Aggressive is the first in a franchise, it has one advantage over the last version of Hawk. While Hawk 3 was a great game, it was also a bit too easy. Not because the level design was inferior or the challenges weren't tough enough, but because people had already honed their Hawk skills in the previous two version. Though the revert was added, it wasn't tough to master and the game itself was pretty much more of the same greatness. But Aggressive is brand new and though it borrows a lot from Hawk, it has a learning curve.

Picking up grinding and air tricks will be a snap for anyone who's played Dave Mirra or Tony Hawk, but learning how to use the all-new vault technique properly takes time. At first, you may actually forget you even have the ability to vault over objects and swing on poles. But there will come a point where you go, "How the hell do I get up there?" Once you begin to incorporate the vault and pole swings into your trickin', the game will become a totally new experience.

Pole swings are perhaps more important than vaults as far as accomplishing some goals. You can swing on either vertical or horizontal poles. A vertical swing will basically just add some momentum, but a horizontal swing can get you to some higher areas. And swings can be combined, so you can swing up to another pole, grab that and swing up to yet another pole, thereby climbing to a higher area. And of course all of this earns you precious, precious points.

Earn skillAggressive also has a unique way of raising attributes. Rather than earning points and buying up the attributes you want, Aggressive rewards you for using your skills. Everything you do earns experience points for the different attributes used. So if you get some speed up, you'll earn a few experience points in speed, or by grinding all over the place you'll earn XP in your grinding ability. There are ten levels for each of the seven attributes (Jump, speed, spin, grind, manual, fakie, wallride) and each of the twelve professional inline skaters start off with their own stat levels. These are always very low, with most having 0-2 levels in each attribute. You've got to use your skills to become the world's supreme inline skater.

On the surface it may seem like this isn't that big of a deal. Sure, you skate and earn experience. But when you're skating around the Civic Center and notice your grind is at level four but your wallride is a pathetic level one, you'll start wallriding more. It's the only way to earn experience and raise the stat. This forces you to learn to use all of your skills. And you'll need all some sweet skills for the later levels and their difficult challenges.

As if all this weren't cool enough, AI features some interesting stat tracking. Yeah, stat tracking as in something you'd expect from a sports title. Check out this list of stats tracked for each skater throughout their career:

Ranking (ex: Curb Dancer)

Cheater (yes/no if you've used cheat codes)

Total time in game

Points/Minute played

Rollovers

Best trick string

Crash count

Continue count

Save count

Critters exterminated

Lightning strikes (ex: 20.17 gigawatts)

Rainfall (ex: .56 inches)

Snowfall (ex: 2.41 inches)

The last few are a measurement of the amount of rain and snowfall in the levels you've been in. How insane is that? Answer: Exceptionally insane.